Probiotic or Chlorhexidine mouthwash for orthodontic treatment?

Well, when you or your known persons are up with braces, it is pretty common to have plaque deposition. Braces acts as a holding medium for the bacteria to grow and on top of that, the treatment duration itself is inevitably takes place more than an year and it is solely your crucial time to take care of proper oral hygiene in order to counteract tremendous bacterial bloom.

What happens if you don’t care your oral hygiene during orthodontic treatment ?

Intensity of virulent bacterial growth are ten folds greater when you are with braces than without them; however, certainly you cannot avoid wearing them when your dentitions are misaligned. Nevertheless, if the plaque and calculus depositions are heavy, it would promptly affect the gums and its supporting structures. This would ultimately result in loss of tooth structure, which is a failure outcome. Beyond that, there are more chances for the infection to spread into the bloodstream via these routes and affecting the other internal organs.

How to overcome this?

Brushing twice daily by incorporating proper brushing technique is essential. However, using mouth rinse is typically important to control further blooming of pathogens on daily basis. It might look simple, but these simple solutions have effective outcome. Still, further undesirable plaque deposits are removed with regular oral prophylaxis.

Probiotic Vs Chlorhexidine mouthwash :

Chlorhexidine mouth washes are traditionally used in dentistry for several decades, which has an excellent outcome on controlling the plaques and gingivitis. There is no doubt in proving the effectiveness of chlorhexidine mouth rinses. However, it imposes certain local side effects like brown discoloration of teeth and other oral structures, disturbances of tastes and sometimes, hypersensitivity Tooth sensitivity too.

However, a new clinical study has been made with probiotics to find an alternative solution and it has been proved to be an effective way, which is as similar to the chemical plaque controlling agent. Probiotics are currently used as a health care adjuvant. Probiotic mouth wash uses natural commensal bacteria to provide a natural defense system against harmful bacteria. So far, there are no side effects for probiotics and by doing so, possibly there are no chances for antibiotic resistance too Antibiotic Resistance – A Serious Issue

Probiotic mouthwash has proven to provide significant reduction in harmful bacterial development and gum inflammation. Therefore, probiotic mouthwash has potential therapeutic value similar to chlorhexidine, but with minimal or nil side effects and economical as well.

Whether Chlorhexidine or Probiotic is a matter of your doctor’s decision according to your health condition, particularly when you are immunocompromised probiotics are avoided; however, if you are prescribed with probiotics, you no need to step back with hesitation just because it contains bacteria. After all, we required normal bacterial flora for a healthy being.